ABSTRACT
This book is about the construction of national identity, and one specific identity across a particular historical period: Englishness 1900 to 1950. It provides a sequence of extracts which-when viewed together-make it possible to explore some of the competing accounts of Englishness produced by writers, politicians, doctors, social-historians, journalists and ordinary people during the first half of the twentieth century. We have chosen to focus on the main ways in which English people thought about their nation and its culture during this period, and have concentrated upon a version of Englishness written by the English about England. We offer material on what might be called the ‘common myths and historical memories’ (Smith 1991:14) which contributed to the construction and maintenance of accounts of what it might mean to be ‘English’. These myths, memories and other representations can never be divorced from the economies, geographical territories or social and legal structures which helped to produce them, since ‘national identity is fundamentally multi-dimensional; it can never be reduced to a single element, even by particular factions of nationalists, nor can it be easily or swiftly induced in a population by artificial means’ (ibid.).
